In the original Rayman game, stone men freely wander on their platform, turning backwards when they face an obstacle. There are two types of stone men: those who hit the ground and fire a flame at Rayman, and those who throw lava rocks at him.

Upon being defeated, stone men inevitably resuscitate after a few seconds. The only exception is in the Game Boy Advance version where they get defeated as normal enemies. Notably, Rayman's hits need to be spaced out or they will be ineffective against stone men.

The stone men make a return in Rayman Origins as the most regular enemies in the mountain world of the game, Mystical Pique. Their appearance in the game was confirmed in the sixth issue of the Daily Bubble on the official blog. Their battle tactics were considerably changed since the original Rayman game. Here, stone men are static enemies, throwing bouncing lava rocks at the heroes from high places. The players can slap the lava rocks back at them, or attack them directly. Like most of the enemies in the game, stone men are bubblized with one single hit, being much weaker than their older counterparts. Some stone men can be seen attached to walls, throwing lava rocks at the heroes; in order to defeat them, the heroes must do a wall run to reach the places where they are attached.

A specific area of the mountain requires the players to run through diagonal platforms while avoiding the lava rocks thrown by a stone man at the end of the path, where a cage must be broken; this is a reference to the classic arcade game Donkey Kong.